Podcaster: Dr. Al Grauer
Title: Travelers in the Night Eps. 93E & 94E: A New Chapter In The Human Exploration Of Space & Your Reality Fueled Spacecraft
Organization: Travelers in The Night
Link : Travelers in the Night ; @Nmcanopus
Description: Today’s 2 topics:
- The first unmanned test flight of the new NASA Orion Spacecraft went perfectly. It made two orbits of the Earth traveling as far as 3,600 miles above the surface of our planet.
- NASA and JPL have developed a computer environment, based on game software architecture, which allows you explore the solar system and beyond using real scientific data. It is called Eyes on The Solar System.
Bio: Dr. Al Grauer is currently an observing member of the Catalina Sky Survey Team at the University of Arizona. This group has discovered nearly half of the Earth approaching objects known to exist. He received a PhD in Physics in 1971 and has been an observational Astronomer for 43 years. He retired as a University Professor after 39 years of interacting with students. He has conducted research projects using telescopes in Arizona, Chile, Australia, Hawaii, Louisiana, and Georgia with funding from NSF and NASA.
He is noted as Co-discoverer of comet P/2010 TO20 Linear-Grauer, Discoverer of comet C/2009 U5 Grauer and has asteroid 18871 Grauer named for him.
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Transcript:
93E: A New Chapter In The Human Exploration Of Space
The first unmanned test flight of the new NASA Orion Spacecraft went perfectly. It made two orbits of the Earth traveling as far as 3600 miles above the surface of our planet. Its path took it nearly 15 times higher than the international space station. This is further than any spacecraft designed for humans has flown since the Apollo era.
The 4 and a half hour mission demonstrated that Orion’s heat shield will be able to protect the crew during reentry. More tests including that of the launch abort system are planned before astronauts are allowed to fly Orion in 2021.
Orion is designed to take 2 to 6 astronauts on missions lasting up to 21 days. The first such flight is planned to be an orbit of the Moon.
NASA is working on plans to have the Orion spacecraft rendezvous with an asteroid which has been redirected from its original path to orbit the Moon.
Alternatively, Dr. Rick Binzel of MIT and others suggest that there are a number of asteroids which could be visited by humans since their orbits bring them closer than our Moon. Telescope surveys to find such candidates are relatively cheap compared to space missions. Human flights to some these Earth approaching asteroids would extend our reach towards Mars, develop planet protecting asteroid deflection techniques, and explore the possibilities of obtaining raw materials in space.
Personally I have to wonder what our planet be like if governments spent a fraction of what they put into wars on human space exploration.
94E: Your Reality Fueled Spacecraft
Computers are extremely efficient at processing numbers while humans excel at visualization. NASA and JPL have developed a computer environment, based on game software architecture, which allows you explore the solar system and beyond using real scientific data. It is called Eyes on The Solar System.
Don’t let the power of this computer visualization program intimidate you. It installs itself and has options that will allow you to begin to follow a path to where your interests lead you. The views that you will get are based on real NASA data.
When you start the program you have three directions; Eyes on the Earth, Eyes on the Solar System, and Eyes on Exoplanets.
Try the simple first. Take a look around. Go to the advanced mode 2nd button bottom right. Pick destination say Mars at bottom left. Click go. Now double click on Phobos. Use the right-left arrow keys to fly behind this small Moon of Mars until you see it in front of the red planet.
Go to our Moon, turn off the satellites, and play with the controls until you are behind the Moon and see the Earth from this perspective.
You can also travel through time to the past or future. Go to destinations, asteroids, Apophis and watch it miss the Earth in 2029. This is all a lot more complicated sounding than what it is. Play with the controls till you get the basic concepts. It is great fun and there is something to learn for everyone.
If you know a 12-15 year old ask them to sit beside you and take you for a spin.
For Travelers in the Night this is Dr. Al Grauer.
End of podcast:
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Concerning to the asteroid hazard avoiding. Actually, most of proposed approaches to the planetary defense are neither effective (if not unreal) nor scalable even to asteroids capable of country-wide destruction. It is mainly due to a lot of unremovable fundamental (natural, but not technological) restrictions and prohibitions in real space conditions as well as properties of near-Earth asteroids. For example, any “pulse” methods (kinetic impacts or explosions together with material ejection) will not work due to pulse-generated shock wave decay and dissipation within the crumbly internal structure of NEAs (“flying gravel-rubble-boulder piles”) and the momentum is not transmitted to the asteroid as a whole. Such a structure is proven today (see recent publication of the NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/predicting-the-unpredictable-the-dynamics-of-dart-s-dive-into-an-asteroid ). Nuclear blast in addition is obviously risky both in all ground-based procedures and in the space consequences. Gravity tractor is too weak in real space geometry around a rotating irregular-shape asteroid. Ablation via laser array is unrealizable due to the insufficient cooling of high-power continuous-operating lasers in space (a vacuum).
As of now, based on system analysis, it is clear that asteroid ablation using highly concentrated sunlight is the only method that meets all of the following criteria: scalability up to global-threat sizes and any type of hazardous bodies as well as low cost and environmental friendliness. This method converts the asteroid to a “natural rocket”, providing more than enough thrust without fuel and energy concerns and therefore its deflection at shortest warning time. Unlike other “non-pulse” methods, it is not subject to fundamental natural restrictions and prohibitions. However, traditional collecting optics are practically inapplicable for this.
An improved concept for such solar-based deflection using an innovative solar collector was proposed and substantiated back in 2013 – see https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11038-012-9410-2
as well as relevant section in the Wikipedia (“Asteroid impact avoidance – Focused solar energy”).